Michaux On Style

Michaux On Style

I’ve been reading a wonderful book of … what, exactly? Aphorisms? Maybe. Brief, concentrated meditations, some a sentence long, some a page or more, by the great French poet Henri Michaux, as translated by Lynn Hoggard. The book is Tent Posts, and was one of the books published by Green Integer in its first year of existence. What a gift this book is! For writers especially. Here, for example, is Michaux on style—or what the writing programs often call “voice.” You know, that quality every writer is supposed to sell his or her soul to “discover.”

Is style—that convenience of settling oneself in and pinpointing the world—really the man? That questionable achievement bringing praise to the reveling author? His assumed gift is going to stick to him, slowly turning him sclerotic.* Style: sign (a bad one) of an unchanged distance (but that could have, should have, changed), a distance where he mistakenly stays and one he maintains regarding his being, things, and individuals. Blocked! He threw himself into his style (or laboriously sought it out). For a life on loan, he let go of his wholeness, his possibility for change, mutation.** Nothing to be proud of. Style that will become lack of courage, lack of openness, or renewal: in sum, an infirmity. Try to get out of it. Go far enough into yourself that your style can’t follow.

*Think late Stevens, late Creeley, late Ashbery. As opposed to late Williams, say, or late Lowell.**Is there a great writer who does not keep actualizing a desire for change?

2 Comments

… your examples don’t prove the point, to me at least: I think late Stevens is better than late Williams,<BR/><BR/>and late Hardy is too . . .<BR/><BR/>this fanciful squib by Michaux simply parrots the Modernist orthodoxy of makeitnew . . . not art for art’s sake, but avant for avant’s sake.

You’re right. The best writing springs from need — curiosity, hunger, the drive to understand — and like a child is its own inspiring declaration and celebration of life. Time and again, we see art that has no real reason to exist, other than to satisfy its maker’s vanity. More often than not, what it reveals is a fear of life and living itself. The solution: let go, and make notes on the way

ABOUT

Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2018, has published 17 books, including a translation of flash fictions by Mexican author Miguel Lupián, and co-edited two anthologies. He lives in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. He teaches at the University of Denver's University College, where he currently directs two programs: Arts & Culture and Global Affairs.